Lal Shahbaz Qalandar Urs Celebrations, 49 Death tool extreme heat

EXTREMELY hot weather in Sehwan on Wednesday causes a large number of people, most of them devotees visiting the town to take part in Lai Shahbaz Qalandar Urs celebrations, to violate a ban on bathing/swimming in irrigation channels

Most Qalandar devotees rush back home after 45 deaths from extreme heat By Qurban Ali Khushik

DADU: Fearing for their dear lives after the death of 45 people in three days from an unending and merciless heat wave, most devotees of Qalandar Lai Shahbaz cut short their stay and started to leave on Wednesday without waiting for the three-day Urs to end. Wah and Aral canal to take a momentary respite from heat, according to Edhi Centre, Sehwan.

Ghulam Shabbir Shaikh, an official at Edhi Center, said he had never witnessed before so many deaths of devotees because of heat during the Urs.

He said that most devotees had died of heatstroke.

The number of deaths had because of heatstroke.

Abdul Qadir, a devotee from Samma Satta in Punjab, said that he had set up a camp near the shrine and stayed in it for three days but he and his colleagues were now preparing to return.

Half of the devotees who had accompanied him to Sehwan had contracted gastroenteritis and other diseases, he said. heatstroke not by lack of water, they concurred, adding, the most annoying problem for the devotees was that of loadshedding.

I.atif Solangi, a devotee, said that arrangements for medical facilities were not adequate enough. If a devotee suffered injuries, say, after falling from the roof of a vehicle, he had to reach the taluka hospital all on his own after Though Section 144 CrPC had been enforced to ban swimming in Aral Wah, Aral canal, Indus river and Sapna lake, thousands of people could not resist the temptation to take a clip in the cool waters because of extreme heat.